Page images
PDF
EPUB

BOHN'S STANDARD LIBRARY

RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

VOL. I.

GEORGE BELL AND SONS LONDON: PORTUGAL ST., LINCOLN'S INN. CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY : A. H. WHEELER AND CO.

OF

ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY

CONSISTING OF OLD HEROIC BALLADS, SONGS, AND OTHER
PIECES OF OUR EARLIER POETS, TOGETHER
WITH SOME OF LATER DATE

BY

THOMAS PERCY

LORD BISHOP OF DROMORE

EDITED BY

J. V. PRICHARD

VOL. I.

LONDON

GEORGE BELL AND SONS

1905

[ocr errors][merged small]

9-49568

Undergraduate
Library

FR to STOR 5-9-83

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

ELIZABETH

COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND:

IN HER OWN RIGHT

BARONESS PERCY, LUCY, POYNINGS, FITZ-PAYNE,
BRYAN, AND LATIMER.

MADAM,

THOSE writers who solicit the protection of the noble and the great are often exposed to censure by the impropriety of their addresses: a remark that will perhaps be too readily applied to him who, having nothing better to offer than the rude Songs of ancient Minstrels, aspires to the patronage of the Countess of Northumberland, and hopes that the barbarous productions of unpolished ages can obtain the approbation or the notice of her, who adorns courts by her presence, and diffuses elegance by her example.

But this impropriety, it is presumed, will disappear, when it is declared that these poems are presented to your Ladyship, not as labours of art, but as effusions of nature, showing the first efforts of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and opinions of remote ages,-of ages that had been almost lost to memory, had not the gallant deeds of your illustrious Ancestors preserved them from oblivion.

« PreviousContinue »